FeKK BAL: International competition programme

FeKK BAL 2024: From All Corners

Perhaps the simplest method to categorise Balkan Peninsula films is through an elusive signifier: heterogeneity. However, we see that several nations, such as Croatia, Serbia, Greece, and Romania, are regulars owing to greater film production and institutional support. In contrast, the other countries rotate on an annual basis. This year, we are delighted to see participants from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo, which has provided us with one of its most abundant harvests of shorts.

Some of the films being shown in the FeKK BAL programme may be familiar to viewers from major film festivals like Cannes, Venice, Rotterdam, Locarno, etc. More than 230 films were submitted, and a few themes recur: the premonition of war, the use of new digital tools and applications for filmmaking, as well as a wider use of archive content. As in FeKK SLO, here too documentarism toys with different experimental forms and the point of view of the documentary gaze.

Because authors have never before had such opportunities to employ personal archives in films through digitalisation or internet access to diverse audio-visual content, it appears that this will become an increasingly significant tool of filmmaking for many filmmakers, particularly independent. However, this does not imply that classic fiction films are in the minority in the Balkan programme (as is the case in FeKK SLO). Quite the opposite—the form is very much alive, but it is open to the influence of documentarism, music videos, and so on. If the size of the region, and thus the production circumstances, themes, poetics, technological means, etc., lead to the expectation of a certain balance within the heterogeneity, we can see a significantly lower presence of animated films, which were previously primarily the domain of Croatian filmmakers. This year, however, both animations come from Bosnia Herzegovina. On the other hand, as the use of AI grows, we can predict an increase in the number of animation experiments in that direction.

This year’s FeKK BAL programme includes 23 short films. Although short film form may never completely shake the perception of it being ephemeral, it appears to be gaining a widespread recognition that it is not ‘merely a phase’ (on its way to become a feature film) but a specific manner of exploring the film language and society, demonstrating annually that films from the Balkans can speak about our current time in a cinematically original way.

Peter Cerovšek, Robert Kuret, Anne Tassel